


Ashes of Life

by Elywyngirlie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A Softer Ben, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Redeemed, Bringing Rey Back, But we ignore other parts of TROS, Canon Compliant, Dark Rey, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), In the Kitchen with Ben, Post-Canon, Yes she's a Palpatine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22600231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elywyngirlie/pseuds/Elywyngirlie
Summary: Dark Rey becomes a reality and Ben has to remind her who she is
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	Ashes of Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iamladyloki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamladyloki/gifts).



> This is for RFFA's Valentine fic and I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> I had a wonderful alpha in PoorQueequeq, and two awesome betas in WeAreWhatTheyGrowBeyond and Josskuhh! 
> 
> Title from Ashes of Life by Edna St Vincnet Millay 
> 
> Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;  
> This or that or what you will is all the same to me;  
> But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, —  
> There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Rey laughed, an oddly jarring, delighted sound and Ben shook his head, hastily wiping away the sweat that trickled down his forehead. His shirt clung to his back, the fabric sticking to him as he rolled his injured shoulder. Her staff stung like a bitch and the burn sizzled as he briefly contemplated wasting energy on healing himself. 

Rey flung back her hood and lifted her chin. Defiant to the last, he thought fondly. His tenderness tickled the bond and she flinched, her eyes flickering closed, before she huffed. 

“You can’t stop me, Ben,” she called. “I am fulfilling his legacy.”

“It’s a legacy you can reject. I did mine.” His voice, pitched low, carried across the smokey plains. The rain began to patter down on them, the thick jungle leaves collecting water before tipping down toward them, streams winding their way to the cracked and thirsty ground. Rey snorted. She snapped on her lightsabers, two black knobby hilts, both blades spitting to life, a lurid red that gave the wispy grass at her feet a haunted glow. Ben sighed, shoulders slumping visibly, head hanging low. He could feel her anger, hot and pulsing, its hunger tearing through her, demanding more, until it could no longer be sated. 

“And look what you’ve become,” she taunted right before she charged. Ben kept his eyes on her feet, muscles coiling, thumb hovering over the activation switch of his blade. Her boots splashed in the mud. She careened toward him, one of her blades lifted, the other a flat line at her waist. At the last possible moment, as her blade began to swing down, Ben jerked upward. He flung the Force out to stop her downward swing as he switched his blade on and drove it up. It sliced cleanly through her hilt, singeing the fingers on her left hand.

Rey screeched as the hilt shattered in her hand. Ben used the Force to bind her, freezing her in space. She struggled against his bond, baring her teeth, her eyes gleaming with red. He plucked the other blade from her hand, switched it off then reached into his pockets to pull out a pair of specialized binders. He snapped one on, wrenching her wrist down and closing the other binder. She screamed in his face, feet kicking out. He sidestepped neatly and picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder. 

“I suppose this means we can finally have a conversation,” he mused as he marched toward his ship. Rey pounded at his back, cursing him out in various languages. He particularly liked the way she called him a son of a gundark in Jawaese. 

“Your accent is terrible,” he pointed out before offering to correct it. She merely muttered under her breath before pounding his back with her fists. He bit back a wince, giving her a hard jostle as she swore.

“What do you think this will accomplish, Solo?” 

“I get my hands on you again, for one,” he joked and she kicked out, feet harmlessly brushing him. Ben chuckled, almost in relief, as he spied the Grimshaw II. Chewbacca hurried down the ramp and reached for Rey, his paws holding her tenderly for a moment before Rey turned and bit him. He snarled at her, his roar carrying across the plains, and Ben shook his head.

“Feral child,” he muttered. 

“As if you have room to talk,” she snapped back. Ben shrugged and followed Chewie inside. 

“I never bit Chewie,” he pointed out as the Wookie in question dumped her on to a chair. Ben knelt to close the binders around her legs and her waist. Rey scoffed as she surveyed the chair. 

“Wishing to interrogate me again?” she sneered. “That didn’t go so well last time.”

“But you look so good tied up, sweetheart.” She gasped then, surprise fluttering across her features. He grinned up at her, skin crinkling around his eyes, he could see her anger begin to fade, and something fizzled down their bond. But then she shoved herself back against the restraints, the chair whining in protest, and lifted her gaze to the ceiling. 

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said stiffly and slammed the wall on their bond. Ben’s hand flew to his chest where he swore he could feel the thread tethering them. When he would meditate with the Force, he could almost see it, a bright shimmering red string. When she closed down the bond, it was as if he were constantly looking for something, something in the corner of his eye, that he could never catch. The lingering feeling of misplacing his key code or a strange burning sensation that no antacid tablets could resolve. His hand would drift to his chest and he would rub as if trying to soothe himself.

Chewbacca strode into the room carrying a wooden frame with a long brown lizard like creature hanging off of that. Ben held his breath as the bubble snapped around him and he could only feel his skin. It amplified the wound in his chest even though the animal took that distinct sensation that way. Rey’s face puckered when she saw the creature before bursting into panic.

“Ben? Ben? Why can’t I feel the Force?” His lips curled in a half smile as he stood up to help Chewie hang the frame of the ysalamir. The archives were useful in discovering tools like these. Even the Jedi needed to restrain other Jedi and Sith sometimes.

“Ysalamir. Discovered by the Jedi over two hundred years ago.They repel the Force,” Ben explained amicably. Rey’s struggled against her bond, letting out a gasp as the binders tightened. “And those cuffs, I designed myself. Rose figured out how the ysalamir were able to push back the force. A little bit of that living matter in cuffs, make them sensitive to movement. And boom, Jedi restraints.” He shrugged and spread his hands. 

“I can use them against you,” Rey ground out, a bead of sweat rolling down her cheek. Her lips pressed together, a thin line, as she strained against them. He knew what she was doing. He had done the same thing when he had practiced against the restraints. The combination of the ysalamir and the bonds could not be overcome without tools. Tools he made sure she didn’t have. The bond wavered as he stepped out of the Force bubble, hovering near the entrance to the cockpit. Grimshaw II was a sleek silver ship with a single pilot seat. Chewie offered to sit with Rey and watch her. 

_ I’ll irritate her less,  _ Chewie pointed out and Ben shrugged, trying to inject as much careless casual into the gesture as possible. He could feel Rey’s hard stare and he didn’t want her to know how much she affected him. It would make him too vulnerable to her--to the power and temptation she offered. 

_ You just like her,  _ Ben said gruffly as he turned into the cockpit. 

_ And you don’t?  _ Chewie growled after him and Ben shook his head as he slipped into the pilot’s seat. The rain was a heavy pour now but he fired up the engines, punching in the coordinates for Tokmia where his mother prepared for their arrival. As the ship lifted into the sky, he reached into a pocket of his vest and pulled out the special beacon his mother had given him. He pressed the button and it lit up, a brilliant aquamarine throwing light on the space around him. 

Leia would know they were coming. 

As the hyperspace calculator spit out the travel time between systems, Ben closed his eyes, leaning back into the chair. Two days. Two whole kriffin’ days on the ship with her. He wasn’t sure he could do it. Her face, paler than usual, cheeks hollowed from the darkness feeding on her. Her frame, muscular and strong from the last he had seen of her, had slimmed down, the knobs on her wrist as apparent as the first time he met her on Takodana. He knew how the darkness drove a person. How the dark side festered and hungered, devouring everything in sight, including one’s own body. He had struggled for the longest time, relying on the routines Luke had taught at the temple. Telling himself he needed the strength to fight even as he watched some of his Knights waste away as they succumbed to the darkness. 

Darkness consumed. Lightness fed. Finding the balance was tricky and even now he teetered on the knife’s edge where a simple brush would throw him to either side. Although he knew in the recesses of his mind, in the whispers that plagued him as he tried to sleep, that he could never fall truly back into the light. Not completely. He had been ravaged. The edges of his soul were ragged and tattered. The Light would only mock him. 

He only had the odd grey space he occupied.

Shaking his head to banish his gloomy thoughts, Ben plunged the ship into the sky, water streaming down the glass, as it smashed through the clouds and into the silent black of space. He pulled back the lever, the lights twisted and smeared into a mottled blue that was the comfort of hyperspace. He smacked a bacta patch onto his wound, hissing at the cool burn, as he tended to his injury before his mother saw and hovered, albeit with love. He was hurtling home. 

Despite the nagging feeling that home was currently trussed up in his lounge. 

* * *

She glared at him as he strolled in to claim another cup of caf, her lip curling, the sharp edges her teeth trawling across torn flesh.

“I don’t understand what you hope to gain from this, Benjamin,” she seethingly spat, chest heaving as if she were hauling in long draughts of air after a marathon. The yslamir looked over at them, tongue tasting the air before returning to its branch, finding little merit in their drama. 

“I don’t dare to be brave enough to have hope,” Ben drawled, flicking some snyth sugar crystals into the brown sludge. 

“You’ve always been a coward. Afraid you’ll never be as good as Darth Vader. Seems like you don’t even have the courage to try.”

Ben turned to face her, hand on a hip, his lanky frame an engine primed to run. 

“I suppose you’re right. After all, Darth Vader managed to save the person he loved while I only ruined the one I loved.” She gaped at him then as he strode past her, as he forced himself to whistle a jaunty and particularly filthy Corellian tune. 

* * *

Chewie busted into the cockpit several hours later, rudely jolting Ben from his sleep. He snarled in Shyriiwook about the dark power gathering in the corner, the shadows haunting the borders of his mind, and her short snappish statements. Ben blew out his breath and carded his hair with sweaty palms. 

“Alright, alright. I get it. She wants me anyways. You rest here.” He held his hand up at Chewie’s objection and fear began its ascent to wrap its sinuous fingers around his heart. So comforting, so familiar, he thought, forcing himself to read it as soothing rather than terrifying. Rey hulked in the corner despite hanging limply from the frame. 

“I am wondering what cruel amusement you are up to with Chewbacca. A friend of yours, I had assumed,” Ben said flintly as he dropped into the seat across from her. She scowled, sharply carved lines dug into the muted gold of her flesh, the ridges of her cheekbones hiding shadowed slopes in the dim light. 

“There are no friends here. Only tools,” she muttered, eyeing him spitefully. Ben shrugged and crossed his arms, well aware of her tracking his every move. His side ached slightly, a dull reminder that he had forgotten something. He stared at that something, his features open and lax, even as she lounged in the darkness.

“I found myself preoccupied with thoughts of you,” Rey eventually said, her rough voice crackling the air between them. “I wondered how you would save me. Do you think I don’t enjoy the power I get from this?”

“No, I don’t,” he replied easily. “I’ve been where you are. It’s hard to be happy when you’re being rendered into pieces.”

“I’m not you! I am stronger than you.” If she had access to the Force, he imagined her bludgeoning him with it, a shiv designed to slip between the notches of his ribs. Only this time, alone, without that power, she was a hollow storm, raging but unable to capsize him. 

“Power, yes. Finally get your revenge on all those who’ve wronged you,” he replied. “Like me, for example. Denying you the Resistance when you wanted to save them. Although now, now,” he paused and tapped his chin. “Now you’d like to skewer them. For what? Refusing to accept your rule?”

Rey let out a wordless scream, heels smashing into the rough frame, rocking it with her fury.

“You know nothing about me,” she panted. In response, Ben sat up straighter and sent forth his trembling hand, filling his eyes with a soft, uncertain light, a reminder of that night on the Supremacy years ago. Her mouth dropped open and something eked out of her gaze, a wavering of resolve. Her hardness flickered, slipping from its resolute stance, and she licked her lips. 

Ben smirked. “And neither do you.” She drew back, teeth bared, hurt flashing across her face, a sudden windstorm that died out as soon as it started. She slumped in her shackles and gazed passively up at the ceiling. Moments ticked by, each longer than the last, giving Ben the privacy to study her. He poured over her every feature, her every line and curve intimately familiar to him, the drawing down of her mouth informing him of the sadness sweeping through her. Sadness that surely converted itself into rage that fueled the darkness within.

“You lead me down this path, you know,” she began. “Let the past die. But I can’t. I couldn’t. And then, and then…”A tremor racked her slight frame. He wondered if she would survive her own hurricane of emotions. He gripped the edge of his seat tightly. He understood how darkness could wind its way through sorrow, how it would pleasingly present itself as a damsel in distress. His hand crept toward his side, a roaring wound, aflame without a fire. 

“But you delight in it, Rey. I. . .merely tolerated it.” His words fell like stones from his lips, hitting the ground with a resounding thud. Rey stiffened then looked away, but not before he watched a tear leak from her eyes. 

“Get out,” she rasped, her voice frayed, her knuckles burning white. Ben hesitated before reaching forward, his fingers grazing hers. She jerked them away as far as she could, her entire body tensing, fear contorting her features. Ben then understood what she feared the most. It was no surprise really. It was no surprise that this is what took her down the path to darkness, pushed her to embrace the empty promises that the dark side brokered in and made so beguiling. 

“We will be in Tokmia in another day. Your family is waiting for you,” he said quietly as he rose. Rey hissed at him.

“I have no family.” Her eyes flashed and her chin jutted forward and she just spelled defiance with her every curve, with every twitch. He loved that about her, he thought, wishing he could tell her. But she had made it abundantly clear that fateful night in Exegol. She was a Palpatine. He was a Skywalker, a Solo, her family’s mortal enemies. 

“You’re still hanging on,” he said as he moved past her to the cockpit. 

“And you’re not?” Her voice tore after him, broken edges of glass scraping against bone. Ben halted, hand on the cold steel of the ship. He glanced over his shoulder to see her straining against her bonds, face fish belly white and furious. Anger whirled around her and if it weren’t for the ysalamir he imagined a hurricane shredding the ship until only her anger remained, pulsing in the darkness of space. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you mope about as if you don’t have your mother’s love or acceptance. As if you haven’t found your place in all of this.”

“I don’t have a place in all of this, Rey. I do what I’m told.” 

She laughed then, a cold skeletal frame of a laugh, without any filling, without any substance. A resemblance of a life shambling along the space between them. Ben winced, concern slid from the spot between his shoulder blades to lodge firmly in his gut. His hand drifted north, to clutch it, to press his warmth into it--he wasn’t sure. But he willed himself to stop. 

_ Overcoming fear is the path of the Jedi _ . The words settled into his ear, a ghostly whisper, a melody he was certain he had heard before. In another life perhaps. Ben understood overcoming fear. He had done it the moment Rey confessed that she would have taken his hand. He licked his dry lips and took in her tiny figure. Nodding once, confirming what he wanted to do, he crossed the small space to the galley and began to assemble her something familiar, something reassuring. He grasped how she lived before and pulled out the dehydrated portions pack and waved it at her. 

“I can give you this or I can fancy it up for you. How would you like it?” he asked casually and her brows knit together. 

“Why do you care how I take it? Or are you just trying to remind me of what I am? A measly scavenger?” The words had little sting in them. 

“Okay then,” Ben agreed before turning to the little stove. He added water to the bread, watching it puff up before slicing it into pieces and tossing it on the small skillet. He added a cube of bantha butter and glided the bread around until it was coated and its edges began to crisp. They had stored some fresh vegetables for this trip, and he pulled out the carrots and onions, dicing them quickly, aware of Rey watching his every movement. He angled his body so that she could watch him easily. She scoffed lightly.

Into a pot, he tossed vegetables, dried herbs, and a drizzle of oil. They sizzled loudly in the small cabin, hissing quietly as he began to drop in the meat and a heaping teaspoon of a red sauce that filled the cabin with a spicy warm smell that had Rey straining against her bonds, nose sniffing the air. 

“I understand hunger, Rey. Not quite like you do, I’ll admit. I’ve never truly starved for food.” She balked, the frame creaking, the ysalamiri skittering down the pipes at her jerky movements. “The thing about hunger is that it needs to be fed.” 

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she snapped. Ben picked up a wooden spoon and poked at the meal before deciding it was done and poured it onto a plate, the toasted bread next to it. It could be eaten together or separately or his favorite way--piled on the toast with a smattering of cheese. Unfortunately, there were little diary products on board, the cheese sitting in the cooler back on base. 

“Don’t you?” Ben said quietly as he carried over the plate. He hooked a stool with his leg and slid it over, sitting in front of Rey. She glowered at him but he could see the quiver in her mouth as her eyes flashing down to the plate. Her tongue darted out, swept along her bottom lip and he tracked its every movement. She caught him and scowled.

He poked his fork into some vegetables and meat, holding it up to Rey’s mouth. She turned away, nose pointed in the air. Ben chuckled before making a humming noise, a tune he knew her parents had sung to her. Rey jerked toward him, mouth flying open to ask a question. He swooped in and shoved the food in her mouth. She glared at him even as she chewed it. 

“There’s no place you can hide that I haven’t been before,” he murmured, his voice soft, his tone even. As if she were a frightened farthier. “The thing about the dark side is that it feasts on us. It cannibalizes us to serve its purpose. It tells us a story in order to keep its hooks in us--a story that takes our greatest fears and enlarges them, makes them too real. Stories that pull from our daily lives.

“Look at your uncle praising that student--he cares for him more than you. That’s something it used to tell me all the time. Or my dad used to coach racers. And sometimes he would spend hours with them. Look at your dad--he cares more for them than you. It gets into you, Rey. No forts in your mind can truly resist it.” 

Rey jutted our jaw out, mouth open to beckon for more food. He obliged, placing another slice of meat in her mouth. But she chewed thoughtfully this time, less resistant, her gaze flickering from the plate to his face, her scrutiny a scalding sun on his skin. He ordered himself not to shift, patiently feeding her until fork tines scraped the plate. 

“What if I do like it? What if...if the stories seem true?” Ben tried not to react, sure his eyes had blown wide. He nodded and longed to be able to hold her, to cradle her face in his hands, to tell her it would all be ok. But she didn’t need fairy tales at this moment. 

“The dark side adds a veneer of truth.”

“But how can you know that? How can you know it’s only the appearance of truth and not the truth itself? My parents sold me, Ben. There’s obviously something...unwanted about me.” The fear was gushing from her now and he almost wished for the bond to be open so that he could shove all of his love and his care and his concern for her down it. But he couldn’t. And he wasn’t stupid enough to remove the ysalamir to see if she were telling the truth or merely acting to garner his sympathy. 

“When you look into the Force, truly into the Force, when you fall into the Force, what do you see, Rey?” She blinked at him, clearly expecting a clean rebuttal to her fear. She worried her lip with her teeth as she thought, Ben sitting patiently in front of her. Her cheeks were brighter now, the food clearly needed. He folded his hands and waited. 

He too was learning all about waiting. 

“I see...a grander purpose to it all. Less of a focus on black and white. On the dark and light side. I see a grey. A coming together. Almost like that prime jedi mosaic on Ahch-to.” His brow wrinkled, unsure of what she was talking about, some hint of the image, a wisp of a memory in his mind. 

“That’s a grand vision. It seems as if the Force relies on you to help it find its balance, something between those two sides.”

“But you haven’t quite found it,” she challenged. “When I...when I gave into my dark side, I saw it flash in you. You almost became Kylo again.” 

Ben cracked a half smile, too wry to be amused. “Here’s a secret between you and me, sweetheart. I am always Kylo. That is as a part of me as Ben Solo is. I am the scruffy big eared kid looking for his way in the world as much as I am the big bad guy with the nasty lightsaber.”

Rey chuckled. “Still big eared though.” It was a warm sound that tugged at his heart and he tried not to see it as a moment of triumph. 

Ben made a face and pointed to his ears. “And here I thought I grew into them.” He sobered up and swallowed hard. Rey’s smile was brighter, more honest. A true glimpse into the woman she once was. He knew the dark was losing some of its grasp on her. 

There was only one way to really banish the fear. 

“My mother loves you. She hounded me for weeks to find you. Rose made me swear on this ship to bring you back and that if I didn’t, she would dismantle it to pieces. And I’m pretty sure she could.” Rey’s smile grew watery, her lashes falling against her cheek as her head fell back. She trembled and he pushed onward, knowing these next words would decide the course. 

“And I have been lost without you. I love you, Rey. My whole heart is yours. To do with you as you please.” Rey snapped forward, hazel eyes glowing dark red for a moment, before the green overtook them, the red bleeding away until a mere gleam remained. 

“And what if what I want is for you to join me? Help me revive the Final Order? Fulfill my destiny as the granddaughter of Palpatine?” She was flinty but without the cold he had known. He licked his lips and inclined his head.

“If that’s what you want.” He peered into her eyes, watching her mouth waver. “But are you sure that’s what you saw in the Force? Does the marriage of dark and light fit taking up what Palpatine told you he wanted from you?” She flinched then, slightly, trying to hide it from him. She opened her mouth before shutting it with a quiet snap. She wasn’t sure how to respond, he was positive. 

At that moment, Chewie’s voice rumbled over the intercom, informing him that they were landing on base in a few minutes. Rey hardened, her lips twisting into a sneer. Ben sighed before jerking forward and yanking the yslamir frame away from her, throwing it down the hall. The Force flooded their bubble, Rey inhaling sharply. She couldn’t control the binders on her body but she could fling objects at him. The stool jerked out from underneath and he tumbled to the ground. 

Ben ripped the bond open, taking advantage of her surprise, to shove all of his love into her. She screamed, body arching off the frame, another cry torn from her. The only thing that can drive out the darkness was love, he knew. He knew it so intently from that dreadful night on the wreck of the Death Star, his body wracked with pain, his nerves frazzled, his heart blooming from her confession. The confusion in her eyes, the tenderness of her finger grazing his knuckle. 

He threw it all into the bond, into her, and she slumped down, her eyes glazed. 

“It’s all yours, sweetheart. If you want me to go knock out Chewie and dump him at Tokmia before blasting off to the Final Order, that’s fine. I’ll do it right now. I’m yours. Just tell me.” And to cement his proposal, he dropped to one knee and held out his hand. He was shaking. 

“Please.” His voice wobbled, a tear spilling from his eye, and she shuddered. Her pain throbbed in the bond. She was being torn into two. He fought against the need to gather her in his arms. 

“It’s too much to ask of me.” She was casting around for an answer, flailing as the stories the dark side whispered were cracking. He had found the chink in her wall and blown it wide open. It was easy to believe you were unloved if you wrapped yourself in darkness, if you allowed it to fester, if you leaned into the stories so that they gave you meaning. He knew that intimately and he sent that knowledge down their bond with a shiver. 

“Then let’s find the answer together.” 

The offer hung in the air and he wasn’t sure if he could breathe. Air left his lungs and his heart stuttered and she sniffed, nodding once. He collapsed into her, burying his face into her torso. Relief crackled around them both, the Force reveling in her consent, and the bond hummed. He fumbled for the key, unlocking her wrist manacles, rubbing them to get the circulation flowing. Rey trembled as she slid to the floor. Ben wrapped her in his arms, and used the Force to tug a blanket around them. 

That’s how Leia found them a half hour later. Chewie had landed and stomped off his ship, shaking his head and muttering about Force users tearing up the galaxy when all they needed was a good talk and some dinner. Sensible Chewie, Ben thought ruefully as Rey curled deeper into him, her breath evening out as she slept. Leia studied them both, her regal features flat and placid. But Ben knew her now. Her waters ran deep.

“I felt it in the Force,” she whispered. “A profound change of wind.” He locked his arms tighter around Rey and figured that he could carry her out and down the ramp, but not without a lot of swearing. 

“She needs love, mom,” he replied and Leia nodded, smiling gently, her eyes softening. 

“And then we’ll give it to her.” With a little maneuvering using the Force and Leia’s assistance, Ben got Rey out of the ship and into his room, lying her on the bed and covering her with his blanket. Despite his mother’s insistence that he debrief the group, he refused, sat beside Rey, and held her hand. He had made a promise. He was going to keep it. He stared out the window, slipping into the Force, feeling the kisses of starlight on his skin, the singing of the frogs in the forests, the murmur of the lake lapping the shore, the Force humming in delight as all creatures pulsed brightly within it.

And Rey. Rey glowed strongly, white and black mottled together, swirling into a pearlescent grey. His own Force signature was similar, the bond a scarlet thread that tethered them together. He lost himself into the ebb of the Force as the sun set and darkness settled.

It was several hours later when Rey woke up, groaning at the grit in her eyes. Ben smiled crookedly down at her, his fingers cramped from her tight grip while she slept. She looked down at their locked fingers before grinning sheepishly.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Couple hours. Mom brought in some dinner from us.” He jerked a thumb toward a pair of trays sitting on his desk. Rey sat up quickly, her stomach rumbling loudly and he didn’t stop his chuckle. She blushed before sucking on her bottom lip, eyeing him cautiously. 

“Did you mean it? Did you mean what you said that we’ll find it together? Whatever it is?” She was more alert now, her eyes their pleasing green and brown, soft and curious and constantly roving, immediately latching onto the exit. Her freckles were less conspicuous against her skin, a gentle blush along her cheeks, and he knew he was wildly and hopelessly in love with her. She felt his realization in the bond, eyes widening almost comically before ducking her head.

Ben squashed the fear that told him that he would ruin everything and cupped her chin in his palm. She inhaled sharply as he closed the distance between them until he could count each eye lash and freckle. He hoped that one day he would know each one. She whimpered. He pressed his lips against hers. 

The kiss was every sunset they had watched. A wave poised over the sand, finally smashing into the earth, rivulets seeking to fill gaps. Their kiss was every moment they rolled over in bed, seemingly searching for someone. Every moment a promise, no longer teetering on a precipice, only a burning spark of hope and peace, desire a flame licking along his limbs. 

She clung to him, extracting her hand to wrap it around his waist, pulling him as close as possible as she deepened the kiss. He rolled over her into the bed, carefully caging her with his arms, weight held just off to the side, lips discovering every freckle, her fingers dancing through the curls in his hair. 

Their bond sang, enveloping them in the warm pleasure that hummed through their blood, their heartbeat kicking into a new tempo simultaneously and they sighed together. Ben laughed and kissed her forehead. 

“Of course,” he promised and for once, they both looked forward to the future. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I brought back the [ysalamir](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ysalamir) from the EU, which were in the original Thrawn trilogy heir to the Empire. Thrawn did create a frame to hold the ysalamir so that he could repel the Force and not be influenced by the Jedi.


End file.
